Episode 195: Scott Messer Answers the Question, Is There Crying in Ad Tech?

Ari Paparo (0:30)

This is Ari Paparo. I'm here with Eric Franchi, and our guest this week is going to be Scott Messer. He's the founder of Messer Media.

He likes to call himself the ad tech therapist. He has a pod and a website and a consulting practice with Jana Marrone that they call ad tech therapists. We're going to find out, you know, do people cry? Is there crying in ad tech?

Eric Franchi (0:51)

That's the real question.

SPEAKER_3 (0:52)

Is there crying in ad tech?

Eric Franchi (0:54)

I want to say in my career, I've seen some tears, but I've never hung a shingle as a therapist.

SPEAKER_3 (1:00)

And does Scott have a license?

Eric Franchi (1:02)

We should get into that. Or maybe not.

Ari Paparo (1:05)

We should. You could tell them your darkest secrets. So you have an event coming up. So what's going on in your world, Eric?

Yeah.

Eric Franchi (1:13)

This has been an increasingly large part of my time. So we are doing a summit gathering. So the first time our investors, our portfolio companies, our friends, it's in November.

And we're actually doing it back to back with Luma. So Luma is having their DMS by Luma. It's always a great event. A lot of people come in for it on November 9th. And we're doing the Appirium Summit on November 10th. So all the ad tech you can stomach in early November. It should be a great couple of days.

Ari Paparo (1:45)

Yeah, that's great. I'm speaking at DMS. So and I'll be attending Appirium. Now, the irony of this little promo is you have to be invited to both of them. So there's no way to buy tickets for either one of them, right?

Eric Franchi (1:55)

There's not. You know, we're reserving a few for for market friends of Marketecture that might be good in the room. So if you know how to get to get to me, hit me up.

Ari Paparo (2:08)

Yeah, hit Eric in his DMs. Don't hit me. I have nothing to do with this. I will show up, but I cannot provide entry to either one of them. Hopefully we'll see there. All right. Well, with that, let's get right into it with Scott Messer.

All right, Scott Messer, welcome to the show.

Scott Messer (2:25)

Thank you. Good to see you.

Ari Paparo (2:26)

So you may know Scott Messer because he wears his own custom name tag to every ad tech event. He is not going to just wear the standard lanyard, laminated nonsense.

He wants to bring it. So how did that start?

Scott Messer (2:40)

Branding schtick. I think it was first at CES 2023 maybe. And I was like, I don't have a badge. And so I'm going to be standing around like wondering what people's names are.

SPEAKER_3 (2:53)

And I thought I should come up with one.

Scott Messer (2:55)

And we're actually on our third version of them now. One sitting in the back over there. And we have these fancy ones for your. Oh, these are the originals.

Ari Paparo (3:03)

All right. And I mean, not for those not watching on video, these are not giant badges. It's not like he's running around with a giant badge. It's just a tasteful, small metal badge he could put on his lapel. It says AdTech Therapist. So what is an AdTech Therapist and why do AdTech people need therapy?

Scott Messer (3:20)

Oh, well, why do AdTech people need therapy? Because they need help, generally. Like we see a lot of broken things and it's not just your tech, it's also your people, your teams and your process.

Ari Paparo (3:32)

Right.

Eric Franchi (3:33)

And so we come in and fix that.

Ari Paparo (3:35)

Oh, my God.

Scott Messer (3:37)

What have you seen, Scott?

Ari Paparo (3:40)

What have you seen?

Scott Messer (3:42)

We've seen some stuff and, you know, bubblegum and duct tape, it's what you think it is.

Ari Paparo (3:47)

Yeah.

Scott Messer (3:48)

They make it work. So we come in and try to help it. And it's very much like a physical therapy where your knee might be hurting. And so we'll like go in and fix that a little bit. But if you don't go to the gym and eat right and do the things, like your knee is going to keep hurting. So that's where we talk about teams and people. So Janimaron and I, my wonderful co-founder of Ad Tech Therapy, we started this in like 2023 when we first started consulting together.

And it just really stuck. Like we actually had a person crying from ad ops. And we got off and we're like, that was really like therapy because at the end of it, they were almost happy and they understood their place in the world. And they and they saw a path to like continuing with their company.